After My Cousin’s Wedding
Every time you curse, an angel gets a hard-on
On long drives I rediscover loving sitting next to you
A little high toggling through Astral Weeks again
And the chanterelles keep cool in the glove compartment
I’m singing out the window to all the cows, and to you
Trying to do my very best trying to do my very best
And the turnpike wears a rainbow like a chiffon shawl…
What work of art isn’t also accident of circumstance
What great love we made in my aunt’s spare bathroom
This morning before leaving Indiana
biography
CHELSEA HARLAN holds a BA from Bennington College and an MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. Her poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Sixth Finch, Pouch, DIAGRAM, Cold Mountain Review, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is the co-author of the chapbook Mummy (Montez Press, 2019), and the recipient of the 2019-2020 Mikrokosmos Poetry Prize, judged by sam sax. She lives in Brooklyn.